MySpace.com

I started checking out Myspace.com. This is yet another place where you can store your personal profile. The primary goal is again meeting other people by inviting your friends to join. They have various communication facilities to have people communicate with each other: a blog, bulletin board, groups, email, classifieds, instant messaging. There is also a place to listen to music or play games. An interesting feature is the possibility to rate other members based on their pictures.

Why are these services packaged into a single service. Most of these services can be offered as stand alone services. The integrating factor seems to be mainly the identification and profile of a user. This allows to show a profile of the user next to his user id and it allows to start communicating through email or instant messaging. Only the rating service uses the profiles in a more extensive way.

I still do not get these kind of services. It reminds me a lot of community sites and/or affinity portals. The main problem I have with these sites is that they are so general. They are not centred around any of my interests. I rather go a specific site to meet friends. Then I have something to talk about.

[inspiration: Marc Canter]